Tools of the Trade: Leatherworking Basics, Animazement 2022

This is the second time I’ve done this panel at AZ, happy to do it again! Lets start with

Types of Leather:

  • tooling/craft : This is what usually becomes belts, straps, holsters, armor, masks, etc. It comes undyed in a variety fo thicknesses. The leather is veg tanned, making it dense and hard so cutting it requires you use an exacto knife. When wet, you can tool it to add relief details or stretch it over a form. When it dries it will re-stiffen and keep whatever shape it was given. Check this tooling tutorial for an example.
  • garment weight : can be any animal, usually sheep, or deer. Pig, cow, elk, ostrich are also available. Each animals leather will have a different thickness and finish. Deer and sheep are soft and smooth, pig has coarser hair with visible follicles, ostrich has large bumps where feathers were. There are even more exotic leathers like gator and manta ray! Get to know your leather supplier, they will know all the good stuff.
  • Rawhide : is the same stuff you see dog chewing bones made out of. Cow Leather is de-haired and then soaked in lime and lastly stretched out to dry. The final product is very thin, light in color, and very hard. When wet you can mold it over  forms or even make lace for sewing that will re-harden when dried.
  • hair-on : Pretty self explanitory, this leather looks like it came straight off the animal and still has it’s hair. Rabbit is used primarily for trim and lining, while sheep and cow can be used for larger decorative pieces.

THE TOOLS:

Utility knife Used for cutting veg tan leather pieces, best to use one with a snapping blade so you can easily keep your cutting edge sharp.
Swivel knife Not for cutting THROUGH leather but scoring the surface to facilitate your tooled design. I would suggest upgrading to a ceramic blade, never sharpen again!
Swivel knife Border Guide Will hold the swivel knife and help you score an even boarder into your piece
French Edge Skiving Knife Gives your piece a nice finished edge. Takes you from drab to FAB.
Tooling Mallet Can go by many names; nylon hammer, carving hammer, poly mallet, etc. They come in hammer style or cylindrical along with an array of weights/sizes. The most important thing is NOT to hit your tools with your regular nail hammer. This will damage the shaft of your tools over time.
Die Stamp These stamps come in infinite shapes and patterns, you can even get them custom made. They are used to stamp a design/motif/pattern into your leather.
Camouflage Stamp Comes in a half moon or crescent shape and has lines moveing out of it radially. Used in floral motifs for plant/leaf like texture
Beveler Tool used to create depth by sinking one side down along an edge and adding some POP in your piece.
Pear Shader This versitale shape is an MVP of fitting into the tightest of spaces. Comes in a variety of designs, (long lines, short lines, cross hatch, smooth) And cam help sink areas back or shade them to the background.
Modeler, Spoon and Stylus This combo tool give you a stylus on one end and a spoon on the other. the stylus or tracer is great for drawing directly on the leather, tracing patterns, or small detail work. The spoon side is great for outlining, embossing and flattening small areas.
Embossing Wheel Great if you need to run a long design over many edges. BE CAREFUL at it is difficult to go over areas if you did not get enough of the design on in your first pass. Make sure you apply enough even pressure as you go for a uniform outcome. You can also sub in spiked wheels that will mark stitch holes at even distances.
Stitch Groover Use this to cut an even groove in your leather to recess your stitches in. It’s not always required but can make your piece look EXTRA nice.
Awl I’m very pointy, watch out for my tip. This can be used to piece holes in your leather to aid in sewing. stitching pieces together. This hole will be “eye” shaped as no material is removed but the leather is torn open to make the hole.
Sewing Awl This awl is basically a needle! It is hollow and has a spool built into the handle. This lets your stitch and punch at the same time, though preunching will be better on your thread. Resulting stitch has running on one side and loops on the other, OR an interlocking stitch. See this video
Hollow Hole Punch Unlike awls, this will remove material from your piece and cut a perfect hole. Requires a mallet. Great for making very LARGE hole sizes.
Metal Punch/Power Punch WILL CUT YOUR HOLES LIKE BUTTER. dies come in a variety of sizes, readily available, intended for sheet metal but works great on leather. also has an adjustable edge guide tot keep your holes an even distance from the edge of your work. Find it on Amazon
Diamond Punch Used for finer looking sewing. Pierces a diamond shaped hole into your work that is easy to sew into using the saddle stitch. Use with mallet
Saddler’s Harness Needle Thick, blunt ended needle. Cannot puncture leather on its own but great for use with the diamond punch. Use two needles to create a stitch that is the same on both sides. Learn to thread the needle and do your saddle stitch
Glovers Needle Not ideal for vegtan leather but can be used for garment weight. the point of this needle is 3 blades that cuts as it passes. Handle with care, our hands are just like leather!

Hand Sewing

The nice thing about hand sewing is that you have an incredible amount of control of your stitches, length, type, etc. I’ll break this out by leather type

    1. Garment: The biggest problem sewing leather by hand is driving a needle through the material. Luckily for you there is a product that is designed to slice through leather with ultimate ease. Be VERY careful when handling a glover’s needle. The point is sharp and the tip is actually 3 small blades meant to cut the leather as it passes. I’d recommend not using regular thread. Upholstery, heavy weight, or waxed thread types would be great for this type of hand sewing.
    2. Craft/Tooling: Sewing craft leather is a completely different ball game. It is probably IMPOSSIBLE to hand drive a needle through veg tan. DO NOT ATTEMPT IT. The best thing to do is to pre-punch holes in your leather using a diamond punch. You can get these punches in any number of holes, I personally like the 4 hole. After you’ve set your holes through both layers, you’ll use two saddle needles and heavy waxed thread to do a saddle stitch. Explaining how to with text is out of the scope of this post, but here is a great video.

Casing Leather

In order to tool your leather and create your designs you must first make your piece receptive to your tools. this process is called casing. Traditional casing can be a bit involved; requires time and space but it looks something like this:

    1. Submerge your piece in water, wait until no more air bubbles come out.
    2. remove from water, store in a sealed bag overnight
    3. check the next day, rewet if it is beginning to dry out while working.

Quick casing is much more accessible and allows for fine tuning the moisture level in your piece as you go. The quick and easy of it is that you will saturate your piece with a wet towel or spray bottle, wait for it to soak in, then repeat until a test area can reveal to you that the leather is ready to work. As you work, rewet as needed to keep your piece moist.

Eyelets, Grommets, Lacing

There’s another way to put two pieces of leather together and that’s lacing! With lacing, you’ll have a row of holes on either piece of leather and use a cord or lace to lace them up, similar to shoes. The first step is to punch the hole.

  • hammer punch : the hammer punch is self explanitory, you’ll have a hollow die that you hit with a mallet or hammer that will punch a hole in the leather for you, good for craft/tooling leather, would be trickier for garment weight.
  • rotary punch : this punch relies on your hand strength to punch the holes for you. There are 6 different size dies that you can rotate around to easily select the proper size. I’ve found that if you don’t get a quality punch, you’re likely to break the dies. This can be used on the thinner craft/tooling leather and garment weight. If you’re backing your leather in fabric, I would not recommend either this or the hammer punch.
  • metal punch : by far my preferred method of punching holes. This particular punch comes with 7 different dies and instead of cutting with a hollow die, it pushes the hole with a solid die. The resulting hole is a not as ‘clean’ as a hollow punch, but the ease of use makes up for it. I’ve used this on 9/10 oz tooling leather and also garment weight deer with zero problems. This die will also cut through fabric backed leather. The adjustable depth ensures that all your holes are an even space from your edge. Also you can use this to punch holes in sheets of metal if that’s your thing.

Now that you’ve got your holes all set up, there are options on how you’d like to finish them! Do you like how many options I’ve listed for everything? I love lists. Each method has it’s own pros and cons.

  • unfinished: I would only recommend this for tooling/craft leather. Because garment leather is so soft and stretchy, putting stress on a hole would cause strain on the leather and would lead to stretched out holes or tearing.
  • eyelet : eyelets are easy to set and will give a nice finished look to your leather piece. A hammer setter is my preferred way as it will not rely on your grip to roll the metal. I would avoid the Dritz brand eyelets as the ends are perforated such that the eyelet will splay out into a star. I’ve found that this leave you with lots of sharp little edges what will catch on your cording and undergarments. The Tandy ones have no such perforation and will roll nicely. I would recommend using eyelets on craft/tooling leather 3 to 4oz and up. Any thinner and it will become harder to find that right force to roll the eyelet down without collapsing the center column. Practice setting eyelets on your scraps! Here’s a handy video.
  • grommet : These are super strong and look very nice on both sides. It’s basically an eyelet with a washer for thre back side. You can use this for any weight leather but it works particularly well on soft garment weight. Here’s a video on how to set a grommet.
  • button hole stitch: something easy and decorative to do with a glovers needle is a button hole stitch. Check out this diagram on how to do it.

Finishing

Now for garment leather, after you sew it, you’re pretty much done! For veg tan, you’ll actually want to finish your leather BEFORE you stitch it. I know that sounds a little contrary.

  • dye: my favorite dye is Eco-Flo water based. It wipes on easily with a rag and drys quickly. Once it’s applied it is PERMANENT. Don’t forget to wear gloves, our hands are essentially covered in leather and you can expect it to be a few days to wash out. I don’t speak from experience. The staining power is strong with this one, do this outside and drop cloth a much bigger area than you need.
  • sealing: This is a helpful extra step to give your leather a nice sheen and extend it’s longevity. I have used Eco Flo’s Satin sheen with great result. It can also be wiped on using a rag. One to two coats of this will give your piece a uniform finish and also make it waterproof (on the exterior side). Do not attempt to seal the suede side. That side is essentially a sponge and you will use so much product without any great benefit.

Retailers

Where do you buy this stuff? If it wasn’t immediately obvious, I do most of my shopping at Tandy Leather. There is one near me and they have enough variety and materials that I can make it a one stop shopping excursion. That being said, get familiar with your local fabric stores, ask if they carry leather. I lucked out and purchased a FULL COW HIDE of garment leather at a fabric store on super sale that I am still making my way through TO THIS DAY.

If you are near a Tandy or other like leather supplier, ask if they do courses. Many times, you can do a weekend workshop when you have access to the instructor and lots of tools and get to leave with a finished product. This can be a great way to get your feet wet and start working with these tools and materials.

Conclusion

One resource i have found invaluable is the book “The Art and Craft of LEATHER“. This book will also go through all the tools I’ve listed (and more) and also has many varied example projects that will walk you through many different skills and techniques. I’d highly recommend it if you want a well rounded beginner resource.

You made it to the end, pat yourself on the back. This was a lot of information. Please reach out if I can answer anything else. I can be reached at milo@milomakesmesses.com, the comments form below, and on facebook.com/milomakesmesses.

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